


Unconscious

by Jinmukang



Series: Whumptober 2019 [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Hospitals, Iron!Dad, Mugging, NOT endgame compliant, Sort Of, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Unconscious, Whumptober 2019, aunt May is fantastic I'll throw hands, eh it's midnight and I'm too tired to tag more, spider!son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-08 23:43:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20985224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinmukang/pseuds/Jinmukang
Summary: Peter’s a hero inside and outside the suit.





	Unconscious

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theorbess540](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theorbess540/gifts).

> Whumptober Day 10! Some Peter angst for you all :)

Tony stops outside door 206. His hand lifts, his knuckles just a few breaths away from knocking, but he stops. His shoulders falling. He glares at the numbers, the papers taped underneath spreading awareness of germs and whatnot, until his need to move kicks back in again. 

He could leave. He could leave this place and drive back to his house and send a check, his condolences, but he also knows that if he turns back now, he’ll never forgive himself. This isn’t some random kid in there. No, no this isn’t some random kid at all. He deserves more than that. Deserves more than a flick of the wrist and all bills paid for. He deserves a visit, at the very least. 

Tony pushes open the door before he could second guess, and instantly the air seems to shift into something quiet, something not quite right but definitely not wrong. It’s like a reminder, a reminder that something has gone incredibly wrong but it didn’t finish the job. It’s a warning that a life almost left this world and you had better be quiet to give that life a little rest. 

Tony hates the air that filters in hospital rooms. Well, except for mother baby rooms. He hasn’t particularly been in one of those yet but he’s sure it has an entirely different atmosphere when compared to the ICU.

He’s pretty sure no atmosphere can quite compare to the ICU. 

He steps in, and he sees a woman curled up on a sofa chair placed near the window. Her eyes are half open, her gaze towards the main attraction of every hospital room: the bed, and the person in it. 

“Hey, hot aunt,” Tony calls, but his voice doesn’t seem quite in it, and May’s eyes blink, her gaze drifting from her boy towards one of the richest men in America. “I came to… say hi.”

She hums and returns her watchful eyes towards the kid in the bed. Tony tries to keep his gaze away from driving to the boy, but he can’t help it as he forces himself to walk across the room and settle in a cheap fold out chair placed next to May’s comfy looking sofa. There’s tubes and wires everywhere, the only noise breaking out belonging to the small heart monitor beeping next to the head of the bed. Otherwise, quiet.

Too quiet. Too still. 

Peter Parker is never quiet. He’s never still. 

Yet, here he is, in a hospital bed in the middle of Queens New York, healing from a bullet to the chest. 

A bullet. To the chest. 

And it all seems so… unreal. Tony sinks down into the chair and leans his elbows onto his knees and he can’t stop staring now. His brain screams at him to look away and pretend that this isn’t happening, but it’s like his very soul _needs _to suck in every detail. Every wire. Every machine. Every single heaven sent beep ringing out into the room.

Christ kid, what have you gotten yourself into this time?

Just yesterday, Peter was at the compound, going on and on and on about this and that. He finally confessed his crush on some girl and turned out that the girl was crushing on him back. They were going to see some new superhero movie the next day after school together. A first date. Peter was nervous out of his mind, his voice small and unsure, a stupid grin practically glued onto his face. 

Tony was happy for the kid. Everyone deserves a happily ever after, and he’s just glad that Peter is trying to figure his own out. Tony was actually curious about how the date would go, and he was gonna grill the kid first chance he got for all the juicy details, but then he got a panic toned voicemail from May just after a business meeting Pep forced him to attend. 

Come to the hospital. Peters been shot. I need help.

It was like the whole world stopped, started, shuttered, and stopped again. Like an old B&W engine. He hates those old cars.

Before he knew it he was rushing into the hospital with a four number code May sent him via text to get into the ICU ward. The entire way, he couldn’t stop thinking about how this is all his fault, he encouraged Peter’s heroics, he _praised _him for it. 

He’s told Peter before that he’s responsible for him. That if something happens to Peter, that’s on Tony. 

He never really thought about how it would feel if something ever did happen. 

It feels horrible. 

So he’s here now, struggling to understand and not wanting to disturb May’s thoughts. She's… the _mom_. This is her boy, and as much as Tong wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake answers out of her, he also… understands that he’s not the parent. Heck, he’s not a parent at all. He has no clue what she’s thinking. How she’s feeling. He doesn’t have a right to demand anything from her, especially if this is all his fault.

Things are usually his fault. 

“It happened after the movie,” May says suddenly, pulling him out of his thoughts. He forces his eyes to tear away from the tubes running up Peters nose and over at the hurting woman. Her eyes are firmly ahead of her, her knees pulled up to her chest and her chin resting on top of her knees. She looks so small. Tony’s never seen her like this. “It just let out. He and MJ decided to go to some ice cream shop, and they went through some backstreets as a shortcut.”

Tony can almost imagine what happens next. So, it didn’t happen while he was in the suit. It was a freak accident. A freak mugging. 

“MJ said that he protected her…” May continues, a suspicious glint in her eyes, “a man cornered them and demanded money, but he was… nervous. MJ made a sudden move, and then Peter shoved her out of the way and-”

Her voice chokes and Tony closes his eyes, bringing his hands up to his mouth, releasing a breath. 

Stupid kid. Can’t stop being a hero, even out of costume.

“The shooter ran…” her voice is barely a whisper, and it’s now that Tony realizes that this probably isn’t the first time she’s received a phone call saying a loved was was shot. That the perpetrator got away. “MJ called the ambulance and they got to him in time- thank heavens they got to him in time-”

Tony clenches his fist and sucks in a breath of air, not quite knowing what to say or do as happy, put together, energetic Aunt May slowly falls apart. She reaches up and wipes beads of liquid from her cheeks and reaches forward, her hand lacing around Peter’s, squeezing tight. 

“Every time he goes out in that suit,” she mumbles, a small smile turning her lips upwards, “_every _time, I can’t help but chant _please be safe_ over and over in my head. He’s out there fighting bad guys, he’s being a hero, and I sit alone at home and wonder when the phone call is going to come saying that he- b-but it doesn’t ever come. I- I just never thought it would be Peter that’s- and not _Spider-Man_-”

Tony moves before he could think of it, and it surprises himself when he grasps onto her hand, the one on top of Peter’s, holding tight. May’s shoulders shake a bit, her free hand going up to her mouth to staunch a small cry. Tony sits there, holding her hand, until she composes herself. 

When her sniffles quiet down, he turns so he’s facing her and he forces a small smile on his face. “How long have you been here?”

“I… got here around noon?" 

Tony couldn’t help whistling. It’s six pm. "Why don’t you go get yourself some food? I’ll sit with him.” May shakes her head and Tony holds her hand a little tighter. “May, please take care of yourself a little.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” she shoots back, but there’s a small smirk on her face. She’s teasing. 

“Well, I _am _a billionaire.”

She chuckles and he hums in victory as she slowly stands up, dropping both Peter and Tony’s hand. She brushes the wrinkles out of her jeans and fixes her shirt so it lies loosely on her body. She takes a deep breath, stretches, and then sends a sad look Peter’s way. “What I’d do to deserve such a perfect boy?” She mumbles to herself, and Tony doesn’t answer as she sniffs, wipes her eyes again, and turns. “You want any pudding? I hear hospitals have the best snack packs.”

“Sure. While you’re at it, I can tell Happy to bring by some cheeseburgers or something. I’m sure Peter is going to be starving when he wakes up.”

May nods again, sending him a grateful look, and then she leaves the room, the door clicking behind her. 

Tony sighs into his hands and leans back in his chair, rubbing his chin as it suddenly becomes way too quiet. The heart monitor’s turned down, all the whirring of the other machines are muffled, but they all seem too loud, too obviously _in your face_ that someone almost died. 

So many things could have gone wrong today, so so many things. The bullet could have gone a little to the right and gone straight through his heart. The healing factor that so many times saved Peter’s scrawny butt could have healed the round inside his body. It could have buried deeper. The ambulance could have been held up, not getting there in time. 

Peter could be in a morgue, not the ICU. Tony would have preferred Peter bouncing on the heels of his feet and literally walking up walls as he goes on and on about his first actual date with MJ. 

No, instead the kid decided to jump in the way of a bullet, probably reacting on pure instinct, to protect someone. 

May’s right. What did any of them do to deserve Peter Parker?

He doesn’t know how it happens, but somehow Peter’s hand ends up back in his own as Tony scoots his chair closer to the bed. 

-o-o-o-o-

Peter isn’t quite sure when the pain ended. He’s been floating for awhile, his mind curiously empty, his thoughts strangely silent. Nothing but a numbness and a lukewarm blanket of darkness to cover him. Everything’s silent, for a long time Peter floats there, trying to think of where he is and how he got there. 

Every time he tries to think the thoughts slip through his fingers like fine sand. 

He floats there… for a long time. Give or take an eternity. Or maybe he’s there for only a few moments, he’s not quite sure. He can’t really think about it. 

Through the haze of silence and floatiness, he begins to hear something. It’s far away, and it echoes in his ears and his hand twitches. The steady, high pitched beepings get louder and louder until it’s the only thing he’s aware of. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to block out the noise, but then another sound greets him. 

“Kid? You wakin’ up?" 

Peter groans. He doesn’t hurt, but his head is so fuzzy and his body feels heavy. For a terrifying moment, he thinks that he’s stuck under a building again, but then his name is called again, and his eyes open to find brightness instead of the blackness that comes when one is buried under a collapsed building.

As one does. 

Be blinks and he finds its actually not that bright at all, his eyes are just sensitive. The heaviness of his limbs remain, and so does the numbness, but it’s not as bad as he thought it was. It just feels… like he’s taken one too many NyQuils. 

Way more than one too many. 

"How you doin, kid, talk to me.”

Oh yeah, someone’s here with him. He lazily blinks and looks over to where the voice is coming from, and it shocks him when he sees none other than Tony Stark sitting there. His suit is a mess, Peter notes, his collar unfolded and his tie loose. His hair looks wild, like it used to be slicked and styled with something but one to many nervous hands through hair gestures completely ruined it. 

Mr Stark smiles at him, and Peter would have smiled back if he wasn’t so confused and shocked. His eyes drop when he notices a far off pressure on his hand, and his eyebrows raise when he notices a hand grasped around one of his own.

The hand is whipped away before Peter can even process it. Mr Stark laughs a bit next to him, folding his arms across his chest. 

“I…” Peter murmurs, his voice sounding far off even to his own ears. His eyes are getting heavy. “Where…?”

“You’re in the hospital, kid,” Tony informs.

Peter hums, because it’s the only thing he can think to do. His eyelids are starting to droop, he’s so tired. The beeping that woke him up is fading, along with the sharpness of his vision. 

Yeah. Yeah he’s pretty sure he’s going to go back to bed. 

“Your hot aunt just went to get some pudding,” Mr Stark continues, which Peter finds just a little odd. He’s not usually one to attempt to carry a conversation. “If you want some you’re gonna have to try and stay awake, bud.”

“M'kay…” Peter whispers, all tension in his body beginning to fade. Pudding sounds nice.

But so does sleep. He’s tired. Why did he wake up in the first place?

There’s a sigh, and it takes Peter a second to realize _oh yeah_, Mr Stark is still here. “You’re probably too out of it to remember… but you did good today, kid.” Peter doesn’t know what he did, but if Mr Stark says so Peter supposes he can take his word for it. “Reckless, stupid, almost got yourself killed, majorly screwed the pooch, but you still did good. I know you’ll be wondering if you were more lucid but… your friend, MJ, she’s fine. She’s not hurt at all. You saved her. I’m…”

A hand falls on Peters hand again, and Peters eyes slip shut completely, sleep crawling over him like a familiar lullaby.

“I’m proud of you, buddy.”

Peter falls asleep quickly after that, hardly processing a single word of what was said. But, the next time he wakes up is when the drugs are less, when May is there, when Mr Stark is gone… he can’t help but feel a sense of calm, though his brain is too muddled to quite recall why.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to my best friend! I hope you liked it!


End file.
